Howard Kester papers, 1923-1972.

The collection contains correspondence of Howard Kester and his wife, Alice Harris Kester, together with writings, reports, leaflets, pamphlets, newsletters, organization reports, photographs, and other items. Much of the material relates to civil rights, desegregation, sharecroppers, and labor struggles; there is some material relating to lynching. Included are materials about Kester's association, beginning in the 1930s, with such organizations as the YMCA, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Committee on Economic and Racial Justice, the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, the Socialist Party, the NAACP, the Delta Cooperative Farm, and others active in the movement for social change. Also included are materials relating to Kester's work, beginning in the 1940s, with such institutions as the Penn School, the John C. Campbell Folk School, Eureka College, Christmount Christian Assembly, and Montreat-Anderson College. There is also material relating to Kester's later work as an educational innovator and about Kester himself and his development as a Christian radical, social reformer, administrator, and teacher. Among the correspondents are William Ruthrauff Amberson, Olive Campbell, Thomas B. Cowan, Elizabeth Gilman, Frank Porter Graham, Charles Houston, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Leland Mitchell, Nelle Morton, Reinhold Niebuhr, Howard Washington Odum, Arthur Franklin Raper, Clarence Senior, Celestine Smith, Norman Thomas, Walter White, and Roy Wilkins.